


Retribution

by ClaudiaWrites



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Muggle, Alternate Universe - Mutants, Angst, Drama, F/M, It's basically a lot of tropes okay, Marauders, Memory Alteration, Romance, TW: Panic Attacks, but it's dark, jily, jily au, sci fi, tw: memory loss
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 08:09:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29468499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaudiaWrites/pseuds/ClaudiaWrites
Summary: My name is Lily Evans. I’m twenty years old. I have red hair and green eyes. I've been experimented upon for the past two years. I tell you none of these facts from my own memory—because I have none. I suppose I’ll just have to take their word for it then, won’t I?
Relationships: James Potter & Lily Evans Potter, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 87
Kudos: 73





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I already have too many WIPs, I know. Clearly, there's no such thing as self-control.  
> Also, this universe will have lots of strangeness and pain. You've been warned.

**Retribution**

**Prologue**

I’m unfortunate enough to know the moment my life changes forever.

Perhaps that’s not the right way to put it. My life doesn’t change at that moment, it doesn’t go from being terrible to wonderful or wonderful to terrible. It simply makes me accept what I’ve always known before: if things are bad, they can certainly get worse.

I don’t see anyone or sense anything.

Except him.

I see him.

I see him as he smiles at me, that crooked grin raining sunlight onto the darkness that is my heart. I see him as that panicked boy who carried me away from nothingness and despair and pain into life, _life_ like I’ve never known: cruel beyond anything I remember—and that’s not much to go by—but still kind because I get to see him. I see the fear in his eyes, always there, day after day, eating him up from the inside. I see the strength there too; relentless, unwavering, and electrifying like the rest of him.

But perhaps, most importantly, I see the love in him, because that’s what makes him _him_. He’s like nothing else and everything at the same time, as if the very existence of him, the molecules and the atoms and the matter—and all those strange terms that my mind doesn’t remember learning—inside him are born of love.

And when he sees me, I think he doesn’t see or feel anything else either.

But because of this, this ‘cruel’ and ‘bad’ and ‘worse’, I see the moment my life changes.

When that darkness slams into him, I want to cry out. And maybe I do, or maybe it’s him, but I cannot differentiate between the two of us at this moment. And I think this is what it must feel like, to know that nothing’s going to be the same again.

When he falls, lips curving around my name, I hear him, I hear that. I hear _that_ and nothing else.

I cannot, because my blood blazes, my entire being driven to the precipice of ruination like it can’t hold on anymore inside the cage that is my body, my stupid, weak, feeble heart. My skin burns, throat charrs, fingers scorch, eyes seeing him him _him_ and his unmoving form.

And then.

Then I destroy the world. 


	2. Am I Alive?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Memory Loss  
> Content Warning: Blood
> 
> Guys. Writing this fic is _tough_. I love it.
> 
> Banner by the insanely talented @The_Dream_Team

**Retribution**

**Chapter 1**

**Am I Alive?**

The earliest memory I have of myself is of me lying on the cold floor.

It’s my face against the freezing granite that makes me twitch uncomfortably. It’s certainly outlandish, because that can’t be right, that can’t be my first memory; I should know how I’ve gotten there, what I was doing, who I am.

I should certainly know my name.

But I don’t.

I don’t know or feel anything other than this cold that seeps into my bones. It’s overpowering and painful, making me want to both lose consciousness and shoot away to the sun to escape the feeling at the same time.

I spend a second to wonder how I know of things like the granite and the sun, but not my own name.

The answer eludes me completely, slipping through my mind like sand slips through fingers: unreasonable and relentless and absurd. My eyes are drawn to my own fingers at the thought, slowly, slowly, as if someone is having trouble raising the curtains that are my eyelids. They finally fall on skin that is pale and stretched over too-thin hands, the limbs trembling slightly.

It is strange then, that I notice for the first time that I’m bleeding.

Something locks into place. It’s like the pain follows the realization and not the other way around. The cold of the floor becomes a secondary concern in my mind because my arms have _wounds_ —small round punctures—that release a steady dribble of blood onto the floor.

It burns terribly, as it should. I’m glad that at least I can feel something else.

The sigh of relief almost leaves my lips but turns into a groan at the last moment.

I try to push myself up, and the pain follows me like a phantom lover. Everything inside me cries, my elbows slipping against my own blood, my eyes burning from disuse, hips and shoulders and ribs throbbing and I think—I think I must have fallen from some balcony and broken my bones or hit my head or maybe even died.

But when I look up, the room I’m in is terrifying in its steely grayness. There are no balconies, no windows, no sun, no people, no life—apart from me, but I haven’t completely discarded the ‘being dead’ theory yet.

The ceiling is several feet high, possessing the same air of lifelessness as the rest of this room, the rest of me. A row of artificial lights throws a semblance of visibility around, but the view is so dreary I almost wish it were pitch dark instead.

I stagger onto my feet, and I’m surprised when my body allows it. There is no crack of bones, no falling face-first onto the floor, no sense of broken joints. There _is_ pain, however, and I figure I’m probably alive if I still feel discomfort.

My eyes travel down, head muddled as I stare at the gray shift dress covering my form. It strikes me again that I know what style of outfit this is—such an inane, useless, superficial piece of information—but still have no knowledge of anything consequential.

My legs are unsteady like a new-born foal’s underneath me, knees knobby and scraped and I think, _this can’t be healthy_. The panic hasn’t set in yet, though I wonder why, because everything about the situation feels rather bleak: from floor to ceiling to clothes and head, all I can see and think is _gray gray gray._

After this brief self-assessment that does nothing but solidify my own sense of doom and foreboding, I take a step forward.

Immediately, sharp red pain shoots up my right ankle.

I’m instantly crouching, certain that it’s broken and feeling somewhat relieved—here’s a part of me that guessed correctly—but I’m wrong.

It feels like floating through an underwater current as I take in the long opaque wire that sticks out of the back of my ankle. That almost does it, it almost sparks that panic that has been escaping me thus far, but then the feeling vanishes in a blink.

I reach out—same, trembling white fingers—and tug the wire out with a jerky movement. The agony isn’t surprising but still unwelcome. I know I’ve bitten down on my lip only when the metallic taste of blood touches my tongue. The sensation is too jarring, and I wonder— _finally_ —how long I’ve been here, if I’ve eaten anything, tasted anything beyond this flavorless, gray air.

The wound left behind by the wire is eerily similar to the punctures dotting my hand, and a sudden image of those wires stuck inside every inch of my skin fills my mind. That, of all things, seems to set me off. I touch my face, my neck, my head, but all I feel is dry, smooth skin and dirty, cropped hair.

It’s too short for me to even pull forward and look at it. It shouldn’t bother me—out of everything in this situation, that should be the least bothersome aspect—but I feel a flare of annoyance nonetheless.

With the wire out now, I manage to take that step forward, almost slipping on the small puddle of blood that has coated the floor under my heel, but stay upright.

Something strange skitters in my chest, and I turn around.

That whole sense of being underwater is in my veins again as I take in the large contraption that stands in front of me. It’s something of a tripod lookalike, except that it’s massive, rising halfway up to the ceiling. An uneasy shiver runs down my spine at the wires that snake out of the rigid structure, like they’re tentacles of a fantastical creature and not a machine made by the real monsters. They’re all facing inward—except for the one I just tugged out—and the ends are all smeared in blood. I know with an unsettling sense of calm that they were indeed inside my skin recently.

A large glass jar is suspended above the whole thing, inside which a light-green liquid bubbles silently. From this jar extends the thickest tube of them all, the needle-pointed end of it now lying uselessly against the slightly raised dais in the middle.

The entire scene means absolutely nothing to me.

Having taken in the only interesting thing in the room, my mind goes blank. I have nothing to do, nothing to say, nothing to think. Because to think, I would need to know a morsel of _something_ , which I don’t.

Seconds tick by, and my eyes feel drowsy again. Perhaps it gets colder in this feelingless room, or perhaps it’s all the blood that I’ve lost, but I find myself sitting down on the floor again, gentle and unhurried in my movements even if I feel entirely miserable on the inside. I wonder if this is how I’ll die, if these paltry few minutes or hours of my life were all I was allowed to know and experience.

That’s a rather shitty way to go, I think.

One should at least have the luxury of knowing their own name when passing.

*********

I feel jolted awake by noises, and it’s impossible to tell if it’s been a second or a year since I laid down on the floor.

My body is at its limit and refuses to move, to investigate, or to even care about what’s going on. Instead, I watch like an unwitting spectator in front of a tele —as if removed from the whole scenario and not sprawled out on my own blood like a damsel for the dark storytellers—as a small portion of wall across from me in the large, yawning room shifts aside.

It’s too far for my half-hooded eyes to make out the faces of the people that rush inside. There are three—I blink—no, four of them: all men, all dressed in identical drab gray suits.

My ears malfunction, and it’s impossible to decipher what they’re yelling about. I almost ask them to leave, to let me sleep, let me die in peace, but I don’t because that’s crazy. And I don’t really know if I’m supposed to be crazy—maybe I am, and maybe this is an asylum—but I don’t want them to leave.

I want to ask where I am. Who I am. I want to know my name.

But I do none of these things. I simply watch, still and quiet and staring. I realize I’m having trouble breathing now, my breaths coming out in wheezes and tearing through my lungs with the effort.

And as I’m lying there, struggling to live and move and _be_ , I see him for the first time.

There’s no preamble, no amount of preparation for it. He doesn’t walk over to me steadily on a breeze or smile at me slowly as his eyes lock on mine from across the room. I can’t know the relevance of this moment, and nor can he. I can’t brace myself for what’s to come, because it’s not possible to brace against him.

His presence hits me like an overpowering wave when he crashes to the ground in front of me, knees buckling to the floor in a way that must definitely hurt.

And then I feel his hands on my arms, gentle and hurried at the same time, flying over my skin like current and sparks of light. His hazel eyes are frantic behind black wire-rimmed glasses—centered around scratched, dirty lenses—and his face is pulled into a devastated frown. His fingers almost ghost over my face, but don’t touch.

“Shit. Shit _,_ shit, shit,” he says, voice breaking.

 _Do you know how beautiful you are?_ I think. If my mouth worked, I might have said it.

Instead, I blink sleepily.

His hair is a wonder; black as night and disarrayed like the wind has flown through it with the sole purpose of kissing the strands. I can tell with my half-aware gaze that my own hair—too short, plain, and boring—could never even pursue that softness.

Someone else falls to the floor beside him, disrupting my shallow musings, but I can’t move my head enough to catch their face. That’s okay, I think—I’m okay with this view.

“How’s it— _fuck_ , this looks bad.”

“I know.”

“Is she—”

“She’s alive.”

“Can she hear us?”

 _Of course, I can hear you_ , I want to laugh. But everything in me is tired, muted, like the muscles in my face have run out of oil to function and can’t be bothered to even pull up into a smile anymore.

“I think so.”

“Why is she…just staring at us?”

“I don’t know, Sirius,” he says on a sigh, a sob, a curse, “ _shit,_ Lily.”

Lily. Lily. Lily. _Lily_.

Is that me?

I’d like it to be. It’s a pretty name, a poetic one, carrying enough strength to be powerfully impressive and yet appropriately soft for the tragic and hopeless situation of the present. It’s also ironically the flower of death—another little bit of pointless knowledge tucked into the recesses of my confusing mind.

“We have to go. _Now._ They’ll be here any second.”

“How?” I watch him turn his head to shoot the other man a desperate look. “While she’s like this—”

“I don’t know.”

Something passes between them, because suddenly his expression is hardening. It makes him look fiercer, wilder, braver, and I think _no_ , he’s not beautiful. He’s rather magnificent.

“I’m not leaving her.”

“Then we do it with her. Despite the risks.”

His eyes move back to me again, the only vibrant color in this otherwise colorless world, and I want to sigh in relief. Emotions fight amongst themselves in the hazel before he nods, unhappy, upset. “Okay.”

“Sirius! James! Come _on_ , we have to go!”

The actual sense of the phrase—shouted in an unknown voice—knocks around in my head before losing its meaning altogether, and the only thing I hold onto is that name. _James_. It sounds even better than Lily, but only if he’s the one wearing it.

The other man leaves.

James shifts closer to me, and he must think I don’t see or understand or live because he says, “we need to get you out of here, okay?”

Okay.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he adds. That one phrase almost makes me move, smile, talk, because it might just be the most obvious thing in this tiny gray world. The one thing no one needs to tell me because I know, I see it in his eyes. He doesn’t want to hurt me. “But I’ll have to pick you up because I don’t think you can walk.”

It takes a second for me to wonder how that one fact relates to the other—my mind is slowing, getting colder—and in that time, he has already put his arm under my knees, around my shoulders.

It makes sense then, why he said that.

He doesn’t _want_ to hurt me, but it’s out of his control just as much as it’s out of mine because hurt it does, and _bad_. Even at the slightest movement, that first tug which has my body dragging on the slick floor like a rag doll, pain shoots up my spine, arms, and legs in a way that is incomparable to the pinpricks I had felt initially.

It convinces me that I’ve been lying on the ground for far longer than I’d thought.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m _so_ sorry,” he says, and I think he might be crying, but I think I’m crying too because there’s something wet on my cheeks. “You shouldn’t be here, not in this hellhole.”

I want to tell him that I don’t mind as much because this hellhole is all I know of the world; all my eyes have been allowed to see since I woke up on that cold, cold floor. I don’t think it would soothe his agony much, even if I could pry my mouth open.

I let my head loll against his chest instead because he’s warm, warmer than anything I’ve felt so far, which isn’t much, but I burrow against him the best I can. My breaths have turned into near-silent rasps now, but I catch a distinct, pleasant smell from him that feels merciful on my senses.

I’m not weak, I think. I’m not ready to give up yet. I don’t want to disappear without knowing anything, without finding the purpose of me, without understanding how I came to be or what I’m capable of.

But if I _do_ draw my last breaths like this; here, in his arms, bleeding, lost, existing and gone in the blink of an eye, I don’t want him to know this.

I tap my forefinger twice against his chest, foolish in my hope that he’ll understand despite the fact that my hands have been shaking uncontrollably all this time. He doesn’t—of course, he doesn’t; this is hardly a fictional tale, he can hardly read my mind—but he looks at me, looks right into me, into the core of what I am beyond this shell of a trembling body and fluttering, watery eyes.

 _I’m okay_ , I’d meant to say.

“You’ll be okay,” he says. “I promise.”

He doesn’t look like he believes himself, but that’s fine. At least I know my name.

And then we’re moving forward, his arms around me steady and trying to limit any unnecessary movements. It still hurts, but I let my eyes shut close, welcoming the darkness behind my eyelids and easing the strain that had emerged from the ugly, artificial lights of the room.

“That’s her?” asks a voice I don’t recognize. To be fair, I don’t recognize many voices. “Um, James, she looks—”

“She’s breathing.”

“Okay.”

“Later,” someone else says, the nerves in the tone not escaping my notice, so it can’t possibly escape anyone else’s. “We’ll take care of this later. But for now—Sirius?”

“Yeah,” says Sirius, and his is one other name I know. I feel stupidly serene, even if nothing about this situation is. There’s a palpable tension to the breath he draws. “Look, I—this is a lot of pressure. I haven’t done this in a long time, and with so many people—”

“It’s okay.”

“Mate, she’s barely alive.”

Arms around me tighten somewhat. “It’s okay.”

“We already planned this, Sirius.”

“I know, but—”

The words in his mouth are eaten up by a gasp that compels me to try and open my eyes again, but it’s a struggle, like the same force that has been holding my voice captive now controls what I’m allowed to see as well. I fight against it, screaming inside with the effort, but finally find a sliver of visibility grace my sight.

And I’m once again rendered confused because the wall—much closer to me now—is sliding aside again. But not how I remember it doing the first time. There’s a loud noise now, like a wailing siren that’s a creature of its own; angry, tortured, and tired.

It sounds almost as bad as the screaming inside me.

Had it been ringing even when these men had entered the first time? Had I been too out of it to catch the sound?

My insignificant thoughts are snuffed away with the harrowed curse that drops from James’s lips. “ _Fuck_ , they’re here. Come on, come on—get a move on—”

I find myself unable to keep up with everything that happens in the next second.

James pulls my body tighter against his, and the pain from this almost drops me into darkness, but I hold on for long enough to see another hand—almost as white as mine—latch onto the gray arm of his suit. Something strange, terrible, _awful_ passes through me, like I’ve been turned inside out or squeezed until I’ve popped like a useless balloon. The little vision I had managed to bargain gives up as the world disappears from view.

“No! _Potter_!” someone yells like they’ve lost everything in life.

The last thing I catch is frost: cold, bitter, jagged icicles that erupt over the room, cover those bleak walls and floor with a blue that almost freezes what remains of the pitiful beats of my own heart.

 _That’s insane_ , I think. _There can’t be frost out of nowhere._

And then I’m gone.


	3. Can I Breathe Now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, everyone! I've changed the rating of this fic to Mature because of some of the themes and content I'm planning over the course of the story. Might have some smut as well.
> 
> Trigger Warning: Memory Loss  
> Content Warning: Injury, Blood

** Retribution **

** Chapter 2 **

**Can I Breathe Now?**

I know I'm no longer in that room before I've even opened my eyes.

The air here doesn't taste quite as bland and desolate on my tongue as I drag in slow breaths—slow because I'm afraid of seeming too greedy and not because I don't need more. The fact that I don't feel my lungs rupture or disintegrate with the effort has to mean that I've survived.

With this knowledge comes the exciting possibility that perhaps all that I'd seen and experienced had been naught but a nightmare, something for me to look back on with an uncomfortable smile and an uneasy shiver because of the vivid details that had been conjured by an overactive imagination. But when I search inside my own mind, I come up empty.

I still don't remember anything beyond that room, beyond that one face, beyond the terrifying frost and that strange green bubbling liquid.

Something sharp pierces down on my left arm, and I want to blink my eyes open.

Instead, I'm dragged back under.

**********

Someone is screaming.

Someone is screaming _really_ loud, but no one's listening.

It takes me a second to realize that the voice is mine. My throat feels torn apart from the inside, and I'm devastated without knowing why—just knowing that I _am_ , and it's torture like I could never imagine.

My body is slammed onto a tabletop, face-first, and I don't know this place, I don't know how I got here, how I was standing when I've never experienced stability before. My arms are flattened on either side of my head, the wood under my fingertips grainy, rough, used, and smelling faintly of burnt curry. Such a specific, distinct odor, and yet I've no recollection of having smelled it anywhere else in the world but on this dark table, in this moment.

I'm still screaming.

My fingers trace a jagged carving etched onto the wood— _TUNEY_ —and I'm still screaming.

"This bitch won't shut up!"

There's a sudden strike between my shoulder blades, and it hurts, but not nearly as much as I know hurt can hurt.

"Just hold her down. We'll drug her."

That doesn't sound like a comforting idea, so I thrash around some more. It almost feels as if the table gives way under my fingers, the wood dipping inside like sponge does under the slightest probing, and someone clamps a hand around my neck from the back, indeed _holding me down_.

I feel a coarse brush against my skin and realize I have hair— _long_ , long enough for me to see it if I tried—but the hand around my neck and the legs behind my thighs, pushing against my arse, is horrifyingly intrusive. Dirty enough that I can't focus on anything else.

" _Fuck_ , quick! She's—"

" _Hold her!_ "

There's another person; I watch them move until their body is in front of my eyes and I can see nothing but the man's shirt and belt and a hand that is poised around a syringe, forefinger hooked through the circular grip while the thumb slants over the piston promisingly.

The liquid inside looks innocent, and I almost expect it to be green, but it's just plain old white.

Never has the absence of colors felt more deceptive to me.

" _No!_ " the word is wrenched out from my lips, and I think— _oh, so that's what I sound like_.

My hair is pushed aside, my skin exposed, my head pressed against the wood so hard that I feel it burning into my face, sizzling like coals hot enough to tear through flesh. Something sharp plunges right into where my spine meets my neck and I—

I'm gasping awake.

It should probably feel intensely mollifying to know that I'd been having a nightmare, but I draw no joy out of the realization as it stutters through my brain, striking my nerves and sending signals at a speed that is slow, _too_ slow. Because I've already determined that it's most likely a memory and not abstract pictures woven by a half-warped mind by then.

There's no time to ponder on this terror of a thought because my dramatic emergence into consciousness has caused a stir.

I hear a loud crash, and turn my head to watch a toppled chair. But before that, before anything, I watch him, because that's what he's like—commanding my eyes with nothing but his existence and his _I'm here_ presence.

He's immediately next to me, looking at me as I look at him. There are deep bags under his eyes, skin sallower than I remember, clothes different—old jeans and long-sleeved maroon shirt—and he feels real now rather than some illusory manifestation of my hopes. I know my head is much clearer because I can actually think and breathe and I'm not being submerged by delirium, but—he's still beautiful.

He doesn't move to touch me like he did before.

"Hey," James says, swallows. His hands almost shake when he moves closer to my side of the bed. "Can you—do you understand me?"

I want to smile. I nod.

An exhale, and then he's kneeling so that we're eye-to-eye. Something warm drapes over my skin, golden and magical and new and old, and I almost want to cry at how good the sunshine pouring in through the window behind him feels. But James is talking again and tears can come later.

"How are you?"

"Okay," I try to say, but it's not the voice I'd dreamed of that leaves my lips. It's a grating scratch of a noise, just the two syllables, and my throat instantly burns.

"It's okay, don't try to speak," he rushes to assure me, hands flexing as if to reach out and touch my skin, but they don't. "You're not used to it."

The meaning behind his words is completely lost to me.

I figure my confusion must shine through on my face because he nods. "You probably have a lot of questions." Perceptive. "But first, do you know who you are?"

I feel like I need to be sitting straight for this conversation because it's an important one, a life-changing one. But when I try to pull myself up, it's a mistake; the lower side of my body sends pain so violent striking through my limbs that I crash back down immediately, gnashing my teeth together against the jolting sensations in my arms and legs and—strangely enough—my neck.

"Fuck! Shit— _don't_ —don't just suddenly _do_ that!" he yelps, on his feet again in a flash.

The beat inside my chest is erratic and unsteady, and I try to gain purchase by clamping my fingers around the covers spread over my body. Perspiration gathers under my breasts as I stare at my arms, the white bandages snaking over skin that I know bears my scars, until only my fingers peak out from the ends.

I feel like an abomination.

"You can't move yet," he tells me, and sounds sorry enough that I look at him again, "you—lost a _lot_ of blood and the wounds weren't easy to close. Didn't help with the way we had to get you out."

The words strike remembrance of those last few moments spent in that room, and the exasperation of not knowing so many things—too many things—but having enough curiosity to choke off my air supply makes me exhale heavily as I turn my head to the other side.

Of course, there's only more to see, more to question.

An intravenous drip hangs from a pole a few feet to my left. For a second, the sight of the apparatus freezes in front of my eyes, a familiar " _No!_ " echoing in my head because machines and I don't seem to get on well. I pull myself together in time, mercifully impeding a panic attack. A pair of lines extends from this drip; one ending on a cannula fixed to my arm and the other disappearing somewhere near my neck. I expect to find another cannula there if I had the liberty or the ability to touch my skin.

But apparently, I _can't move yet._

Still, at least that explains the biting twinge I'd felt on my neck.

"None of us here are proper doctors, but you were in a coma, we think," James informs as he pulls up the chair again and sits. The thrumming inside my chest hits a snag. "For a bit over a week."

I don't feel the slightest sense of calm at that information, but I still nod, once, because what else is there to do, given that I can't move, speak, cry? I've lost another week of my life without knowing how many I'd already shed before.

He seems to sense my frustration and expends it for me through an embittered breath born into the world from his lips. His eyes are golden lakes of wistful reflections. "I know you're scared. You have every right to be. But I just need you to know—we won't hurt you, and I—I'm glad you're safe."

The word 'alive' probably sits on his tongue but I suppose 'safe' is safer.

I don't hold back the ephemeral smile that wants to tug my lips upwards this time. There's a shift in his expression, so clear and vibrant, brightness spilling over his features as the sunshine spills onto me. I wish I could see myself right now, to know whether this reaction—like he's witnessing a marvel in this threadbare universe—is justified.

His eyes fall, hand lifts, lifts, until his fingers brush the tips of mine. "Lily," he whispers, and neither of us imagines my stuttering inhale. He sees the force of the word on me, and repeats again, "Lily. That's you—that's your name. Lily Evans."

The stretch of my lips widens, the muscles in my face quaking like they're not sure how this works anymore. I feel something wet pool in the corners of my eyes.

If possible, his gaze softens even more.

The fragility of the moment is disrupted when someone enters our little sanctuary with uncontrolled turbulence.

The man in the doorway looks more like an ethereal entity than a human being with flaws; he's decked from head to toe in black; sleek dark hair pulled back to reveal cheekbones sharper than glass. His brows slant inwards, mouth parted slightly in disbelief or wonder or shock, and when I see his eyes, for the first time, gray doesn't terrorize me.

His voice is warm, if a little strangled, when he blurts, "she's awake."

Lying on that bed, partially mobile and entirely confused, I decide I like Sirius.

For it is undeniably him and his voice that had slithered in through the clouded haze of looming death while I'd been bleeding out on a faraway floor. I had hardly been able to make sense of anything then, and even now—as the seconds tick by on an unseen clock—I keep losing my grip on what I'd seen and what I _think_ I'd seen.

Because if I'm right, and it's mental to even consider this, but—

No. Not now. Later.

"You're awake," he says again, this time looking right at me. The way his features arrange themselves, I know he thinks I might not be aware of the fact.

"Yes," sighs James, and there's such familiarity in that one rush of air, a fondness that my previously withering state hadn't allowed me to notice. "It's been a few minutes. I reckon she's having trouble speaking still. Mind fetching Remus?"

A petulant raise of the brow. "Why don't you?"

There's a terse shifting of body next to me, and I have to wonder if I'm missing something—if I'm supposed to be more intimately acquainted with James than he's let on, than I've let myself consider. If I've shared some relationship with him that I no longer remember.

The possibility burns through every cell inside me and sets off exhilaration that I pray doesn't show on my face.

"I've—"

"Okay, fine. Didn't expect you would anyway," Sirius clicks his tongue, halfway turned away when his eyes gravitate to me again, "glad you're not dead, Evans. I hope you're not a bitch."

" _Sirius_ —"

But he's already left before James can utter even half the appellation. My eyebrows raise, the words tumbling around in my head. He hopes I'm not a bitch. Does that mean I've been known to act like one around him or that we've never met before this?

I struggle to reconcile any noble act I could have performed that would prompt complete strangers to get me out of a situation worse than death.

Like everything else inside my head, my answers are lacking.

There's a light brush of skin against my fingertips and electricity zooms rapidly up my arm at James's touch. My fingers coil instinctively and he stills.

"I'm sorry, I didn't—" the unoccupied hand goes to his hair, sifting through the strands cruelly so that they stand up even more. "I just don't know how to—I've been worried for you."

I know. It's all over his face, all over his existence.

Warmth spreads like melted butter inside my chest, and there's no hesitation when I hook two of my fingers against all of his. James looks at me, his eyelashes hypnotic as they flutter on a blink.

"Thank…you."

It feels like speaking through a throat full of ash and burning carbon, and sounds the same. I'm almost embarrassed at the broken timbre, but with the way his face breaks, I find inhibition dropping away like a dried petal.

"You don't— _please_ , you don't need to thank me."

That's completely absurd to my ears. I convey as much with a pronounced frown, and it almost makes him smile. I'm suddenly staggered by my own unshackled need to watch it happen; I ache for it.

I try something I hope will work.

My fingers slant slightly on his hand until they reach his wrist, belly humming at the broadness of his arm, the shade darker than my own, the skittering pulse of his nerves. I tap twice like I've done before. "James."

A silent something whooshes out of him at my indelicate croak; I watch it happen as his chest first expands, like he wants to consume this moment into himself, everything he's made of, and then contracts again like it might be too much for him to hold inside.

Silence falls, and I realize he's not going to break it. So, I continue, pulling my hand back until it rests on my stomach, muscles impossibly tired already. I point to myself. "Lily…Evans."

The burn in my throat is much too potent to ignore now. James notices the grimace that has slid into the corners of my mouth and understands.

He scrambles forward, hanging off the edge of the chair as I hang onto the edge of my sanity. Eyes blazing, burning me to my core, he holds my hand, shakes my palm, light, _very_ light, and says, "James Potter. It's nice to meet you."

I don't understand the strange sensation that bubbles up inside me until it overflows in the form of quiet, silent laughter. The hilarity is unforeseen because objectively nothing about what's happening is funny. But I play his _nice to meet you_ in my head again—as if we're barely more than friendly strangers who've run into each other on the street—and close my eyes in bizarre glee.

When they open to the world once more, I see that I've gone and done it.

James is smiling.

Grinning so bright that it's painful to watch, like his face has been made for that emotion and for it alone. I know without knowing that he must laugh a lot.

Must _have laughed_ a lot. Before.

Before whatever.

Before me?

I don't know.

This unsavory drop into reality is accompanied by a scuffle of shoes and voices as two men enter the room: one I recognize, one I don't.

Sirius seems to be whispering furiously under his breath, engaged in conversation with the man with light brown hair and gentle blue eyes. I try not to be too obvious about my gaze, but he has scars on his face and a tired air that hangs around him like a coveted blanket. I feel a torrential sense of kinship towards him and the underlying exhaustion lining the skin around his eyes. I'm instantly glad and guilty for it.

I do not linger on either emotion.

"Oh, good!" James sighs, and looking at him, one could never guess that he'd been smiling a moment ago; even the ghost of it has been wiped away, slate empty. "She's been up for a while, and—you probably know best, Remus."

He gets up from the chair, finger dragging over my palm with the movement. Something tender and sublime strings me to him; I feel the _zap_ of it falling into place even as he moves away to the foot of the bed.

"Hi, Lily, I'm Remus Lupin, if you haven't guessed."

My eyes tear away from James to blink up at Remus, the softness of his expression. I nod slightly, holding his name close. I feel like an animal starved for information, and I'll take all the scraps thrown at me.

"How are you feeling?"

I raise my brows, eyes gone flat. Sirius chokes out a laugh.

"Fair enough," Remus flashes a grin, and I like it. I think perhaps I'm not too dull. "You must be wondering what's going on. Can't say much but we've had to keep your body supplied with salts, vitamins, and other nutrients through the intravenous lines; you were already severely weakened when we brought you and—we didn't know if you would—"

Live. Survive. Recover.

"Die."

"Yes, thank you, Sirius." A glare thrown over his shoulder before eyes return to me. "And I'm not a doctor, I just have some—let's call it experience, shall we?—with medical stuff. We've had trouble procuring even basic equipment like this, so I haven't been much help, I'm afraid."

"That's rubbish," James's voice is low, eyes admonishing, "we wouldn't be here without you."

 _Where is here?_ I wonder.

It's like my head's been cracked open for the thoughts to play out on a screen because Remus is immediately gifting me with an answer. "This is Godric's Hollow. It's James's house." Again, before the question has even crossed my mind fully, "I suppose I should say that it's _one_ of his houses. No one will think to look here. Don't worry."

Grateful though I am—immensely so—for such an influx of answers at once, his insight into my curiosity unnerves me enough to instantly put me on edge. I make a concentrated effort to think of another question.

_How did we escape?_

My gaze stays tacked onto him, searching for the smallest hint of something on his face or a shift of light in his eyes, but Remus simply stares back pleasantly.

I feel burrowed under my own stupidity. What had I been expecting, exactly?

"Sirius tells me you can't speak yet."

"Actually, _James_ tells Sirius that you can't speak yet." There's no mistaking the teasing air in his voice as Sirius expels the sardonic comment. "God forbid anyone else gets to spend over half a second alone with you. Boy's losing his marbles like no one's business."

I don't know where to look after the words have settled in my brain.

Watching James as he throws an annoyed glance at Sirius—appearing more exasperated than embarrassed—my earlier musings are dragged back to the forefront. I wonder why my mind has fixated on this specific facet, overlooking any and all other questions, which, by their nature, should emphatically feel more important given my plight.

And yet, I'm surprised by my restless need to find out why I've been saved; what I mean to him.

No one else seems to glean this impatience from my expression, however, because Remus steps closer, splaying his right hand out until I notice a tiny glass vial resting atop his palm. The honey-hued liquid inside prompts my insides to twist into themselves, instantly curling away in alarm.

I run my tongue over the back of my teeth and look up.

"It's a medicine for your throat. It'll help."

Trusting him should be easy; I should know he means no harm because they've saved me, kept me alive and breathing when they didn't have to. But I find that despite such reassuring facts, I still feel fear clawing up my veins, blood turning into frost as cold as the one I'd—probably—hallucinated in the throes of anguish.

Remus senses my hesitation, lips puckering in concern, brows dipping as he looks away helplessly.

"Hey, it's okay," James says, eyes sad, "we won't force you to take anything you don't want to. None of us will. But—it _will_ help you get better."

I bite my lip, unclench my fingers. A hesitant nod.

He smiles at me, small and steady.

"Now this will make you feel drowsy again," Remus tells me, uncorking the vial slowly, as if trying not to scare me. I'm grateful for his patience. "But once you've woken up, your throat should be better. I'm hoping you'll be able to speak by then."

I tuck my chin into my chest, feeling irrationally apprehensive at his words. How long will it be till I come to again? Will I have spent another week in unwilling oblivion before a jarring scene behind my eyes staggers me awake?

There's not much time to dwell on such misery because Remus is already raising the bottle to my lips, tipping the viscous liquid inside.

The medicine leaves a strange mixture of a sweet and burning flavor in its wake as it slides over my tongue. I'm scared I'll choke due to my prone body; the position evidently not conducive for ingesting anything—especially not when I've become unused to the feeling and taste of anything but air.

Fortunately, it passes without further incident. I feel the effects of it immediately; the burning dulls to a comforting warmth, the charred lines of my esophagus humming in gratitude at the pleasant sensation. The relief is so overwhelming that my limbs sag against the mattress some more, and I find Remus's words to be true and genuine.

My eyes already fight to stay open.

"Rest," Remus says, and I acquiesce readily.

Before all my senses can shut off entirely, Sirius's voice floats over on a stubborn wisp of consciousness. "Does she know?"

"No. But she suspects."

**********

Darkness spills over the walls the next time my eyes flutter open. Thankfully, my mind doesn't latch on to any jolting memories-turned-nightmares this time around. I'm not sure if that fact should comfort me as it does, since I could really do with some semblance of my own identity.

I'm alone in the silence, but it's not as suffocating as I remember it to be in the gray room. The effort I make to sit up this time is careful, controlled; my folly from before acting as a chiding reminder to not jostle myself too much. It feels slightly unnecessary, however, when I notice that the cannulas from my arm and neck are missing, allowing me to twist my body if I wanted.

I'd have to be a fool of the highest order to try.

The blanket that had been spread over me falls away a distance when I've settled myself against the headboard, breathing plainly. I see that I'm still wearing that dying dress, the ends and bodice of it now soaked through with dark, dry blood. It's a macabre sight, morbid beyond comprehension; I stare at it with an open mouth and find myself wanting to picture how I must have looked to them, lying there like a hollowed-out body with no purpose. Barely breathing, certainly not living.

Moonlight streams over my lap and I stare at that too.

I wonder if they've left me here now, abandoned in a world I know nothing of with a body that barely functions and questions that burn through every sense, rising around me like tendrils of a well-stoked fire.

My arms are still covered in bandages, and I want to rip them off. What a strange urge.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

The scream that wants to erupt from my chest barely holds under the pressure of my lips when I whip my head to the side. My heart is nothing more than a startled animal confined to its smothering cage.

A short, stoutly figure with watered-down blue eyes blinks at me. Wisps of thinning blond hair frame the roundness of his head. I don't know what he sees in my face because his own has rearranged itself into a terrified expression. He occupies the space near the window that had surely been empty but a second ago, and no amount of clamping fingers or deep breaths is able to push away my fear.

"It's okay," he says, hands raised in front of himself as he steps back, "calm down. I'm not here to hurt you."

"Who are you?" I hear myself ask, and this time— _this_ voice, it's mine, full and provoking only the ghost of a burn. It rings pleasantly against my ears, the tone firmer than I'd expected, strangely lilting. Most importantly, it doesn't betray my rising uneasiness, and I'm thankful.

"Peter Pettigrew," he answers, and he and I both seem to know that it means nothing to me. "I helped save you, bring you here."

It sounds bizarrely like he's trying to gain my favor.

"When did you get here? You weren't—I was alone."

 _Where's James?_ I want to ask. I refrain.

"No," Peter shakes his head, slow, so slow that I'm tempted to ask him if he's got a crick in his neck. "You weren't. I was right here. You just didn't see me."

I want to laugh at his attempt. Derision courses through me, so sudden and surprising that I have to pause, memories of words slamming against my mind: _I hope you're not a bitch_. The swallowed retort is bitter on my tongue, but I hope my face conveys what my mouth doesn't; there's no way I wouldn't have seen him—seeing, looking, observing is all I've done since the cold floor.

"Where am I?" I ask, because I have to make sure.

"Godric's Hollow," he answers immediately, and I know he's aware I already had that information. The harrowed look in his eyes breaks something in me, and I feel exhausted. "I'm not—I want us to be safe, too, Evans."

I don't miss his use of the plural.

"Where are—the others?"

"Sleeping. It's late. And—well, they've been really tired as of late."

There's no need to ask why that is. "Shouldn't you be asleep too?"

He shrugs. "I'm fine. One of us had to be here in case you woke up."

I incline my head, accepting his answer. Try as I might, the queasiness of being accosted unawares when I'd been certain of my isolation does not sit well on my senses. I feel prickingly aware of each of his movements; the shuffling of feet, the nervous darting of eyes, the twitch of nose, rustling of cloth. Pained, awkward silence hangs in the air between us, and I know now that Peter exudes none of the easiness that I've seen in the other three men.

"How long—"

"Look," he sighs, cutting me off, "I'll go get James, okay? I'm not sure I'm the right person to give you answers."

I'm _sure_ he's not the right person to give me answers. But I don't say that because _I hope you're not a bitch_ and perhaps I'm judging too harshly, colored by the cruelty of my experiences thus far. None of this induces much guilt, however, because I don't owe the world anything at this moment, not with the way I've been treated—chewed and spat back out with no remnants of my own self to speak of.

My instincts and feelings are all I rely on; I'll trust only those I want to.

"Okay."

With a short nod of the head and a stilted smile, Peter leaves the room and I take the moment to release a shaky breath. My eyes decide to grasp onto my surroundings as I wait, details falling into focus under the pale light supplied by the moon outside: the room I'm in is comfortingly simple; ivory walls stretched out spaciously and floor empty but for the bed I sit on and an old, large mahogany chest of drawers in the corner.

The house—or at least this specific room—has clearly not been lived in for a spell. Truthfully speaking, I'm relieved that this image falls in line with what Remus had said about Godric's Hollow being just one of James's houses.

If it's as unfrequented as I deduce from the lack of furniture and belongings, perhaps I can allow the walls around me to thin somewhat, to consider that I might actually be safe here.

Distantly, the sound of crickets rubbing their wings together penetrates the quiet. I wiggle my toes, fascinated by the tingle of blood flowing at the movement. It makes me wonder if I could feel the same sensation in every other limb. Before I've had a chance to question myself too much, my fingers are roughly pushing the covers away, ignoring the dregs of pain as skin brushes harshly against fabric.

When my right leg drops to the floor, a quick hiss forms between teeth and tongue. White gauze—dotted with spots of bright blood—spans the entirety of my leg, starting from just below my knee and twirling all the way around my calf and down to near my heel.

The sight makes me angrier, sadder, and I think I'll finally cry now.

But before I can indulge in this expulsion of emotions, the door to the room is slammed open against the wall. The frightful tremor that runs through my spine is hardly surprising as my eyes swivel around.

James stands in the doorway, barefoot, hair disheveled—sticking up on one side, defying gravity—glasses sliding down nose, mouth parted slightly, clad in a comfortable white cotton tee-shirt and soft black pants. Dark eyes strip me bare, inside-out, barely blinking as he takes me in: one leg dangling off the bed, one twisted in the sheets, gray dress rising precariously up the whiteness of my thigh.

I wonder if I've lost my sense of self-consciousness, feeling nothing but unexplained greed for all he holds. My hands don’t rush to pull down the dress, my eyes don’t feel the need to shy away; I am afloat in my unexplained need to watch his every move, his every breath.

He takes a step forward, the muscles around his eyes stretching wide. I notice his occupied arms—a bundle of indistinct clothes, a bottle of water. Seeing it suddenly alerts me to the fact that I'm parched. It's not very shocking.

But James doesn't move to place anything on the bed. Doesn't move at all.

A broken breath rattles through his chest. "Evans."

Something inside me has collapsed, my fists bunching against my lap.

"What the _fuck_ is going on?" I ask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to @YouBlitheringIdiot for all the expert medical details ❤


	4. Do You Know Me?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Memory Loss, Self Body-Shame, Panic Attack/Anxiety Attack  
> Content Warning: Blood, Injury
> 
> I felt _a lot_ while writing this chapter. Hope you do so while reading it, too. 
> 
> Truckloads of gratitude go out to @writtenbyfreckles for her immense beta help with the chapter. And, of course, to @The_Dream_Team for designing a phenomenal banner for this fic, which you can now find on Chapter 1: "Am I Alive?"

** Retribution **

** Chapter 3 **

**Do You Know Me?**

My outburst has surprised James.

I see it in the smallest of changes; in the tightening of his grip around the clothes tucked against his elbow, in the shift of his eyes, the sharp inhale, the way he bites the inside of his cheek. I’m left floundering at the number of emotions flitting over his face in the handful of seconds that it takes for him to speak again.

“You can talk now,” he says.

This is not a revelation, nor a question—an unneeded acknowledgement at best. But it sets my pulse thrumming, the relief and poorly restrained happiness in his voice hammering cracks into the colossal walls I’ve erected around myself.

“Yes,” I whisper, the toe of my right leg stretching as it attempts to skim the cool floor. “Will you tell me?”

Hesitation has taken residence in his expression now, elation falling away. The desperation in my tone and his own discomfort finally sets him into motion—he’s moving forward, placing down the clothes at the foot of the bed, locking his stare onto me as he straightens, face masking his thoughts.

I’m thrown off a cliff, grip-less, slipping surely as I try to control my reaction to his proximity. The reality of him, his gravity, seizes me like it hasn’t done before, not even when I’d woken up to find him beside the bed. He’s corporeal now, flesh and blood—I catch the pinkness of his otherwise pale right cheek; evidence of the side he’d favored when sleeping. Abruptly, I’m awash with alertness, brain no longer a mess of clouded, hysteric thoughts and body functioning well enough to keep me sitting, blinking, taking him in.

I catch his smell—nostalgically pleasant—when he’s finally in front of me. My neck strains with effort to keep my eyes on him, until it eventually gives up, and I’m left with no choice but to drop my gaze.

James sits down to ease the pressure. The mattress dips under him, our knees almost touching. “I will. But you need to drink some water first.”

This is no bargain at all; my hands are eagerly reaching for the bottle he offers. Our fingers brush lightly during the exchange, and I see his hand frozen in the same place for a second too long after I’ve already pulled back. The cool liquid is an elixir in my mouth, on my tongue, against the walls of my throat. It slides down my body until I can feel it awakening me, hungry for more.

The bottle falls on the bed soon, empty.

“Better?” he asks, lips slanted in amusement.

In all honesty, I could down five more. “Yes. I feel like I haven’t tasted water in forever.”

That wipes the smile right off his face. I almost wish I had kept _all honesty_ to myself.

But I’ve been suspended in the unknown for long enough, so I suck in a breath, let the words fly out. “How long?”

He doesn’t like the question; his brows have scrunched together in the middle, shoulders almost sagging with an invisible weight as he runs a hand over his face. I hold my breath, wait for him, try not to push. When the arm drops back against his thigh, I know he’s steeled himself, eyes haunted and weary but braced against some force I can’t fathom.

The whole spectacle looks much too serious for the kind of gravitas that can be attributed to two simple syllables, one simple question.

Though I suppose ‘simple’ is a rather subjective term—perhaps it’s not quite as easily applied to the kind of narrative I currently find myself a part of. But what do I know of the world, of stories and realities and all that lies in between?

Nothing.

Before my thoughts can spiral any further, James exhales harshly.

“Just half a day,” he says, and I’m instantly opening my mouth, ready to clarify, but a raised hand and a hurried nod of the head stop me. “I know. I meant just half a day since you were last awake. But before that…” He breaks off for a second, and I want to ask if I can borrow some of his courage, too. “Two years.”

_Two years._

The answer is a cruel mockery of the abstractness of time as it rattles around inside my head, because isn’t time just a construct meant to keep track of change and progression? In the grand scheme of things, two years are nothing. Two years come and go all the time. Two years means I’ve aged only slightly, hardly lost my whole life swimming through nothingness.

But here’s a pleasant self-discovery—I don’t give a fuck about the grand scheme of things.

 _Two years_ of my life.

Gone.

 _No_ , _not gone_. I blink my eyes, bite the tip of my tongue. _Stolen_.

In this moment, I am scrambling to latch onto the only two things that anchor me to the present, that hold me together and prevent the fracture of my very being into pieces too vitriolic to survive. 

First, my unparalleled need to know what has happened to me, what _continues_ to happen to me. If I haven’t been awake for two years, why do I not have memories from the time before? Has trauma beyond my wildest imaginations compelled my brain to block out everything it has ever known? Where did those years go?

A dull ache forms around my temples at the crash of questions.

Second, these men. Evidently, I’d been something more than just a bleeding carcass to them if James possesses this information about me: my name, how long I’ve been gone, possibly where we were. How do the other three fit into this scenario? What roles do they play? Who are we hiding from?

And in the center of all of that, glowing a bright, angry red— _why did you leave me in there for two years?!_

“Evans,” his voice is hoarse, careful, and I’ve lost sense of how long I’ve been sitting there for. My folded leg has fallen asleep. “Are you—talk to me. I’m here.”

“But you weren’t.” The sharpness of my own tone surprises me. I don’t stop. “You weren’t there for two years.”

James looks like he’s been slapped across the face, _hard_. I watch the muscles in his forearms pull taut with tension, fingers furling against the mattress beside him. Hazel eyes look at me; dull, upset, tortured. “You’re right. You deserve to be angry.”

This is not what I want to hear. It makes me feel slightly nauseated, makes something bubble under my skin.

“Thank you for the permission.”

A muscle ticks in his jaw. “I’m not—”

“Why not?” I’m shooting bullets at him now, uncaring where they hit, which ones ricochet. “Why didn’t you come sooner? Why didn’t anyone else? Am I—was I _that_ terrible a person? Did I have no one? Why was I… _there_? Why were there fucking wires inside me, James? Why am I bleeding everywhere? I cannot, I cannot, I’m—”

“Shit, shit,” he’s shifting forward, eyes wide and panicked in the face of my questions.

But no, I realize half a second later, it’s not the questions that have unnerved him; it’s _me_. I’ve scared him.

My chest heaves with dry, aching breaths, lungs expanding and contracting and expanding and contracting _again_ but unable to convert air to oxygen. I feel empty and full at the same time, sounds like I’ve never heard before echoing in my ears: stinging wheezes, shattered cries, _suffocation._

“Evans, come on, stay with me,” James implores, and warm hands slide onto either side of my head. It’s the first time he’s touched my face, thumbs pressed on cheekbones—gentle and firm at the same time—long fingers gripping almost half my head, brushing over cropped hair. “Breathe. Deep. Slow. It’s okay. _You’re okay_.”

I realize this is not normal, air should not crack in my chest like this. Maybe the impending disintegration of lungs is here now, ready for its payback, for all the moments I’ve been allowed to selfishly breathe. The anxiety that wants to build itself like a pyramid on top of its reflection at this thought takes monumental effort to push back.

I hang onto James’s words for help, his eyes like anchors in a tumultuous storm. “You’re safe,” he nods, pouring the conviction into me. “I’m here and I’m _sorry_ , but you’re safe now, I promise. I’m here.”

My hands shake as I lean forward to rest my palms on his knees. I don’t understand why I’ve done it until I feel the solid sturdiness push comfortingly against my skin. Even in my subconscious, I’m aware of this unsettling assessment: he is stability, I am disorder.

There’s a split second in between where I feel him tense under my touch, but it’s gone in a blink and I’m thinking I’ve imagined it. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve let my mind run away from me, after all. I concentrate, instead, on reality, on keeping my grip, on _not_ slipping.

“Do you want more water? I can just—”

My chipped nails almost dig into his thighs, vehement, alarmed, and I jerk my head from one side to another. Just once. 

_No._

“Okay, okay, I’m not leaving. Just breathe, Evans.”

I do as James says.

I breathe. 

I inhale. 

I exhale.

I do it again.

I do it until it no longer feels fake.

I do it until wheezes have turned into silent gasps.

I do it until I no longer need to consciously do it.

And throughout the whole thing, I don’t cry. 

Maybe it’s just another one of those things that my body has forgotten how to do. My visceral _want_ to shed tears is strange, depressing and melancholic even in my own thoughts, but I can hardly help it. It stems from a need to drive out some of this heaviness from inside me, a desperation with which I seek an exchange of grim musings for some joy.

“Better now?”

I look up at him, at those words, pull my trembling hands away from his legs. I don’t know how much time has passed.

His expression is woven out of sincerity and concern, and there it is—the slightest tug of guilt in my belly in spite of my earlier determination to not feel the emotion.

“A bit,” my voice says, gulping in air, “I shouldn’t have lashed out at you like that.”

James’s hands are no longer on my face, and I don’t recall when he slipped them away. Something bitter twists around his mouth. “I’m surprised you haven’t before, honestly.”

That rings too close to Sirius’s comment from the morning and I’m immediately knocked back by the sting his words leave on me. The callousness in his tone—harsh, acerbic—is not something I’ve encountered before, not something I _ever_ want to get accustomed to, because he’s been the only thing I’ve held onto in a painfully dark world. In my nascent reality, I’ve revolved around his sliver of light when falling into an abyss had felt inevitable.

But now, I’ve pushed him away with my accusations. My bullets have left chinks in his armor that no longer feel fixable.

I am so _, so_ stupid.

“Reckon I would’ve lost my mind if I were you,” James says, and the words are so soft that I’m leaning closer to catch them in time before they’re eaten up by the night. For a moment, I’m left grappling— _he doesn’t hate me? He’s not upset?_ —before it finally settles in my head that he’s bitter _for_ me, and not _because_ of me.

My very essence burns, flush with gratitude.

“I wouldn’t rule out me having lost my mind quite so easily, Potter,” I say, throwing back his last name at him as he’s done for me. Eyes widen infinitesimally, brighter; he likes it. “Would it scare you to know I’ve considered myself insane a handful of times already?”

But he just shakes his head. “You’re not going crazy. Things around you have been a bit…mental.”

He can say _that_ again.

“I need answers.”

“I know.”

“Help me. Please.”

The most unexplainable phenomenon unfolds before my eyes then. James looks at me in a way that empties all the air inside my body, like he’s never looked at me before this moment, like he’s seeing me for the first time. I wonder what he finds, whether it’s the same girl he’d saved, whether I’m the person he expected me to be or the bitch Sirius hopes I’m not.

I wonder why I even care.

“Do you trust me?”

His question is unexpected. I’m not prepared enough to school the shock in time.

It is _too_ soon. He sees it in my face, smiles ruefully.

I’m stumbling in my haste to assure him. “It’s not like that. I don’t even know enough to trust anyone or anything yet. I’ve even taken my own name from you. But, it’s not—when you say that I’m safe here, I trust that. I _believe_ that.”

He’s nodding. “Okay. Good. It doesn’t matter though—you don’t need to explain yourself to me. Or to anyone else.”

I know that. “Why did you ask?”

The light in his eyes has shifted again, and I’m fleetingly pondering how many shades of colors can bloom in those irises when he replies. “Because I’m going to tell you what you want to know. Whether you decide to believe anything I say or not is up to you. But—I need you to trust me on one thing: if I decide to hold back on…certain information, I want you to trust that it’s not out of any malicious intent to keep you blindsided. It’s just a lot to unpack together and I’m not sure if—if you can—”

“Bear it all at once?”

He struggles, lips pressing together, jaw clenching, brows knitting, even as the rest of his body remains stoically indifferent. Finally, a nod of the head. “Yes.”

I don’t blame him.

I’ve not been the best recipient of difficult revelations since I’ve woken up. Despite what James says, I cannot dismiss the very real possibility that I’m not completely right in the head. I’m set off easily, too cautious, too volatile, ready to flee at the first indication of danger—though from what and to where, I do not know. With thoughts that lead nowhere and panic willing to make itself known at any available opportunity, my own apprehension at getting to know too much at once has me considering the weight of his words seriously.

The nightmare from the morning flashes before my eyes, making the decision for me.

“Okay. I understand.”

James blinks, almost as if he’s taken aback by my easy concurrence. His surprise does not abate his relief. “What do you want to know?”

Such a laughable string of words; what do I _not_ want to know? Where do I even start?

The flood of questions proliferating inside my mind is thrilled, bouncing against each other, vying to wriggle their way to the forefront in a bid to have answers. I find myself searching—picking, observing, assessing—for the first one that burns curiosity through all my nerves.

I’m successful in my hunt soon enough: “Where was I? What was that gray room?”

“Gray room?” he repeats, and then his eyes clear. “Oh, you mean—it was an experimentation facility. A lab, for a better word—St. Mungo’s.”

The amount of dread the answer induces in me is truly commendable. “Experiment?”

“Yes,” James says. His voice is steel; hard and unwavering. “It used to be a hospital a few years ago. But now—it’s nothing more than what you must’ve seen. They’ve turned it into an underground hub for carrying out inhumane experiments. You’ve been their test subject for two years.”

I feel violently sick.

Pushing down the bile threatening to rise up my throat is a challenge harder than expected.

“Who’s ‘they’?”

The first hints of hesitation shadow over James’s face. We’ve barely started and he’s already stepping around me tentatively. I might’ve found it in myself to be more annoyed if every single second from this standpoint did not terrify me to my bones.

“They call themselves the Death Eaters.”

My mouth drops open. “That’s rather dramatic.”

He huffs out a humorless laugh, head lolling back for a moment as his eyes stare at the ceiling. I’m mesmerized by the movement of neck muscles, the Adam’s apple that pushes lightly against skin—skin that stretches and dips smoothly into sculpted collar bones, broad shoulders, straining the fabric of his t-shirt.

Quite unbidden, insecurity slams into my gut; I’m little more than a wreckage next to him.

“They live up to the name,” James is saying, and his eyes are back to me. They’re dark, raging with quiet fury. “The whole operation is led by a man named Tom Riddle, though he goes by Voldemort these days. To put it mildly, the blood on their hands is enough to fill rivers to the brim— _Death Eaters_ , indeed.”

Shiver runs down my spine. I no longer want to linger on this moniker.

“What—what operation?”

“To find people like you.”

I’ve been tossed into rough wind, clueless as the gale shoves me around, this way and that. _People like you_ , he says, as if those words should suddenly open doors to comprehension that has eluded me for so long.

“What do you mean?”

And now I see it: his wholehearted reluctance, the bravado he’s put on for my benefit faltering, crumbling down in fine shreds around him. His right hand runs over dark strands, grips the back of his neck, drops down to rest a hair’s breadth away from mine. My fingers take concentrated effort to stay put. “I mean that you’re special, Lily.”

He’s delaying it. I won’t humor this.

“Special, how?”

A long, shuddering breath. “You can do things; things that are not considered _normal_ , extraordinary things that lie beyond the capabilities of other human beings.”

As if I haven’t been feeling abnormal enough already.

I fail to control the shaking of my hand when my fingers reach up to touch my mouth, an aggravated rush of breath escaping through the gaps. My heart pulses somewhere near the jugular, mouth gone dry, fingertips brushing against chapped skin of lips. I should ask for more water, but answers take precedence. 

Every passing second is time I require to push the words out.

“What can I do?”

James’s response takes less than half a moment, but infinitude lies in that tick of silence in between. “I don’t know.”

Well.

Talk about being anticlimactic.

“What?” My stomach is tumbling. “How can you not—are you lying to me?”

“I told you I wouldn’t do that.” Hazel eyes blaze, and the fire in them has rendered me speechless. Just his eyes—fierce, intense—feel more alive than the _whole_ of me, and I’m delirium-soaked again. “I told you the decision to trust or not lies with you, but if I don’t want to tell you something, I’ll just not say it. I won’t—I don’t want to lie to you, Evans.”

My small nod of acceptance has him closing his eyes—a prolonged blink—before they open again, calm once more.

“So, you really don’t know?”

“No.”

“But how’s that possible? You seem to know everything else about me.”

“Not _everything_ ,” James sighs, roughly dragging a hand over his face. He doesn’t pull the fingers away completely, so I’m rewarded with the view of a half-smile that is both rueful and amused at the same time. “Though not for lack of trying.”

I wish he would make sense more frequently.

I say it. “I wish you made sense more frequently.”

This gets soft laughter spilling out of him, and the sound is _real_ , unlike that husk of an angry laugh he’d released earlier. “Sorry. Sometimes I just say things out loud without really thinking through them. Let’s just say I’ve considered myself insane a handful of times as well, yeah?”

My lower stomach has developed a sudden fancy to inviting home a swarm of butterflies simply because James has _smirked_ at me.

I vomit my next question. “Do you know me?”

“Sorry?” he shakes his head, confusion plain on features. In hindsight, I could’ve— _should’ve_ been more specific. “I’m kind of lost here. Do I know you in what sense?”

I discover that words are funny things; I always seem to have a plethora of them inside my head, running over each other in their haste to dominate, pointless, directionless, ready to jump onto a tangential string of thought at a moment’s notice. The irony here is that not one of them seems willing to make an appearance or travel down to my tongue when I’m in need.

The absurdity of my struggle to find words, therefore, is not lost on me.

I finally settle on: “ _Did_ you know me? Before.”

“Before,” James whispers, unwitting or uncaring that I am all but hanging onto each breath of his. I haven’t felt this way since the gray room—this muted atmosphere, this _slowness_ , this underwater, dream-like state as he looks at me for an eternity. Perhaps words have betrayed him as well, hiding behind the comfort of their own non-utterance. “Before what?”

My incredulity answers him. _Are you fucking kidding me?_

“Right, um, _before_ ,” he fumbles, looking torn, and for what, I haven’t the faintest clue, “no, I didn’t.”

There’s something lodged right under my ribcage, heavy and uncomfortable. I recognize it to be disappointment. His answer leaves me unsettled, a barrage of confusing thoughts and contradictions pooling in from hidden doors.

“I mean, not really.”

My eyes are snapping to his. “What? What do you mean by _not really_?”

“I’m sure you don’t remember this but,” _he did not just_ —“ _Fuck_ , I mean you probably wouldn’t remember it even if you had your memories intact because of how long ago this was. Anyway, we lived in the same neighborhood for a while, as kids. And um…you sort of couldn’t stand me back then. To be fair, I was an annoying piece of work.”

There’s no universe, no parallel reality where I can imagine not remembering someone like James. The notion is so implausible that I have to reign in a scoff of disbelief. Instead, I wrap myself around the warmth of his tone, the fondness lacing his memories of a time I have no recollection of—a time that sounds simpler even to my unknowledgeable ears, a time that doesn’t feel like it belongs to this world.

A staggering sense of wistful sorrow has clamped around my heart; I ache for these memories he speaks of.

“What happened then?”

“Just life,” he shrugs, “we moved away after a handful of months. And I never saw you after that.”

The tale he’s recounted for me is an inadequate justification for how I’ve seen his demeanor construct around me. I’m enticed to voice my thoughts, to ask if he’s lying to me again, omitting some details for my sake, but I can’t get the accusation out.

It’s quite the surprise to learn that I’ve let my walls crumble. I’ll trust him until he gives me a reason not to.

So, I incline my head. “You’re seeing me now.”

“Yeah,” James breathes, eyes widening as if the awareness has embraced him just now, “I suppose I am.”

My skin feels over-sensitive all of a sudden. “Are there others? Like me?”

A slow nod. “Yes.”

“Do you…know anyone?”

Another flash of hesitation. “Yes.”

The hammering against my chest is painful, and anticipation stings the next breath that I draw. “Like Sirius?”

He doesn’t move at first, doesn’t even blink, and I’m speculating whether the question has actually left my mouth or if I’ve simply convinced myself it has. But before I can repeat myself, James pinches the bridge of his nose under his glasses, forefinger and thumb squeezing some tension away.

“I suppose there’s no way I can refuse to answer this one since you’ve made your own deductions already.”

I lick my lips, idly poke the ankle that has fallen asleep. “I have…a theory.”

“Oh?” he asks, and I catch a glimpse of his blinding grin again. This _amuses_ him for some reason. “Great. I’d love to hear it.”

I’m sure he _would_ , if I could get myself to stop gaping at him. If it weren’t entirely in bad form, I would’ve asked James why he doesn’t smile more often. Though looking at the state of affairs, there’s probably a good reason behind it—there needs to be something to smile _about_.

“It hinges quite heavily on my assumption that Sirius is the one who got us out of the gray room. Am I wrong?”

His stare is relentless. “You’re not.”

“Okay,” I’m nodding, untangling my leg from the sheets because I really need to feel the limb now. Pinpricks and needles burst over skin, under bandages. I hiss in discomfort. “So, I know we didn’t actually leave the room by the door.”

“Right,” James agrees, and his hands are suddenly hovering over my ankle. “May I?”

I’m not certain what he’s asking permission for, but I agree anyway. And then his fingers are sliding around my heel, pulling my leg straight until my foot rests on his lap. There’s nothing inherently mesmerizing about the action, and yet, it feels unquestionably intimate to me. Something warm creeps up my neck, and I know I must be turning red. But James doesn’t look up, and I can’t see his expression—only the top of his mess of a hair.

I don’t think I’m breathing at this moment.

“These bother you, don’t they?” His voice is quiet, one finger hooking under the lowest twirl of bandage. My toes are tempted to curl into themselves.

“They make me feel broken.”

He inhales deeply, the sound too loud against the hush of night. “You’re _not_.”

I press my lips together because I don’t know what to say to that. The silence is what prompts him to finally drag his eyes up again, and they lock onto me with purpose. “Can I take them off?”

The question is unreasonably stirring in his voice. “ _Yes_.”

I don’t even get an acknowledgment from James; his fingers immediately get to work. With his left hand supporting my calf, holding my leg steady, his right one starts unwinding the frayed edges of the bandage. Knuckles brush over my skin during this endeavor, and I’m aflame at every touch. _Unreasonable_.

“Go on. You were saying?”

It’s difficult to recall, but I get there eventually. “The room. We left in the blink of an eye. I remember feeling…unpleasant.”

The downplaying of sensations on my part is abhorrently extreme.

“What did you feel?”

“Pain—beyond what I’d already been feeling, that is. It was like I was turned inside-out, like I was sure my body wouldn’t hold anymore.”

The skim of his fingers stutter for a beat. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“So?”

“So what?” He doesn’t look up, dedicated to the task at hand. “You haven’t told me your theory yet.”

My fingers clench the sheets. “He can jump between places?”

A quick, final tug: the bandage falls away from my knee. I find my eyes instantly drawn to the scars dotting my shin at intermittent intervals. They’re no longer the ghastly holes I recall from before, proof that the skin has stitched itself together, albeit rather slow. If it’s been over a week, I shouldn’t be able to make out the angry edges of the injury still, nor feel the wisps of pain that cling on resolutely.

James’s touch—gentle, careful, brushing down the side of my leg—has me looking at him. He stares back. “Precisely. Teleportation.”

My mind is immediately a jumble of nonsensical thoughts.

 _Teleportation_ , he threw at me as if it’s not completely insane, as if I’m not bucking under the implication of what it means for me. I’m once again submerged under the reckoning that I know _absolutely nothing_. If my brain has retained the elemental knowledge of how the world functions, why has a piece of information such as this blown me to smithereens? Is it because it’s not “normal”? Because it’s not something that has been ingrained into my being since the so-called beginning?

I think my face betrays my rising anxiousness, because James’s hand is wrapping around my foot—still in his lap—firmly. “Evans,” his voice warns, “relax.”

I shake my head. “I’m fine.”

“I think it’s better if we stop here for now.”

“ _No!_ ” I pull my leg back, folding at the knee once more. The sensation of sheets against hypersensitive skin is too agitating. Wordlessly, I lift my other leg onto the bed, and his fingers restart the process of removing the bandages again automatically. “No, please. I need to know more.”

He does not look happy, but this is not about him. “Okay.”

“Tell me how you know I have this…ability without knowing what it is.”

A frown makes an appearance between his brows, and his lips pucker in concentration. When James speaks next, I’m certain he’s weighing his words very cautiously. “Because I know what the experiments are for. The fact that Voldemort’s kept you under observation for so long—there’s no other explanation. But I haven’t been privy to the details of your abilities and so, I don’t know.”

 _Something_ about his tone…

“And how have you been privy to the other details?”

That makes him stop entirely, palm resting over ankle as he returns my gaze, unblinking. “No.”

“No?”

“I won’t answer this one.”

Frustration and annoyance erupt inside me vehemently, and I want to drive him to do it, to give me answers, but then I see the determination etched into his every single cell and exhale. _Fine_ , my huff says, _I’ll let you have this_.

I expect to see relief on his face at my compliance, but somehow, there’s a sense of defeat that has taken over the air around him. I loathe it with a passion.

“James,” I call, hauling him out of the darkness, “will you tell me about my family?”

Despair lines his face. “Evans, I really—”

“Please,” I whisper, “I need to know this.”

He doesn’t say anything for a while, quietly removing the bandages until pale skin and dotted scars are the only things that remain in view. Without warning, he shifts closer, reaching for the gauze around my right arm as well. I do not protest.

“Your parents were really kind,” he starts, and my breath hitches immediately, “They loved you a lot. I don’t remember much of them, but you look a lot like your mother. Her name was Rose and your father’s Charles. You loved them right back, with everything in you.”

His use of the past tense has gouged a hole in my chest for parents I don’t even remember.

“How did they die?”

James bites down on his bottom lip, eyes sad. “They were killed by the Death Eaters.”

I’m no longer certain that I can bear to listen to this. Is there anything in this God-forsaken reality that will not carry waves of pain and suffering to me? Am I doomed to experience nothing but cruelty at the hands of time as it makes me its plaything?

My eyes fall shut, and I mourn for my parents, feeling illogical guilt over not having memories of them.

James reaches for my other arm and steadies the shaking limb. “I’m sorry. You have no idea _how much_ —and I shouldn’t have said—”

“No,” I counter, opening my eyes with a deep inhale. “Thank you for telling me. I asked for it.”

He holds my gaze for a beat before nodding. “Of course. You don’t have to thank me.”

I wonder about his need to constantly say that, as if he can’t wait to shed my gratitude from his conscience like it’s venom. I don’t share this with him, of course, because it dangerously sways into _insane_ territory. And if I can recognize the lunacy of this thought inside my own head, it certainly does not bear mentioning outwardly.

“There,” James sighs, pulling away the last twirl of gauze. “Now you no longer need to feel broken.”

If only it were that simple. 

I don’t respond, instead taking a few seconds to dutifully drink in the sight of my own skin. At first glance, my arms look just as mutilated as my legs—healing but not healed. But then I’m squinting, eyes drawn to a patch of skin on the underside of my right wrist that looks especially scabbed.

The fingers of my left hand reach out to brush over it gently. “What is…”

“That’s, um, we did that.”

I’m snapping my gaze to his. “What? Why?”

“They had a tracking chip inside you,” he says, “we had to get it out as soon as possible before they could trace us here.”

Dregs of a memory resurface and I’m reminded of the sharp piercing I’d felt on my arm. Had that only been right after we’d left? “So, you just cut it out of my skin?”

James looks troubled. “We didn’t have a choice. It was—”

“No, that’s alright. I just wanted to know. Lucky you were aware it was embedded in the wrist.”

I’m not the least bit surprised when he purses his lips, unwilling to address my tacit implication. He thinks he’s overshared for one night; I’m inclined to agree.

There’s still so much to know, so many questions that want to suppress me under their burgeoning weight. But my heart feels heavy, nerves tired, head still processing information from something fifteen minutes ago. I’m rather certain I could implode at the slightest push.

“Hey. Are you okay?” James asks, soft.

 _No_. “I don’t know.”

He doesn’t pry. “You need to eat something.”

I’m sure I do. But if I spend a second longer in this filth of a decaying dress, I might start acting like the bedlamite I already suspect myself to be. “I want to clean up.”

It’s like the words have triggered some realization in him. James twists around slightly and pulls forward the bundle of clothes he’d brought in. I’d forgotten about those, too. “I got these for you. They’re some old clothes of mine,” he adds, not meeting my eyes. “Sorry. We didn’t have much else.”

I’d prefer even a burlap sack over my current attire. “It’s alright. I’m grateful.”

He nods, and there doesn’t seem to be anything more to say, so I slowly drag my legs over the edge of the bed, clamping my jaw shut against the pain that shudders through the limbs. The balls of my feet press onto the floor first, appreciating the sensation, before the flat and the heels follow. I gulp in a large, steadying breath, and push myself up using tremulous arms.

The tendons in my legs scream in agony. And then my knees buckle.

Fortunately, I don’t slam to the floor and snap myself to pieces—a scenario that feels highly probable in my state—because arms wrap around me instantly, breaking my fall. I’m momentarily stunned; I hadn’t even been aware that he’d been standing beside me, foreseeing this exact situation, no doubt.

Something erupts inside me, and it’s not sweet; it’s ugly and dark and repulsive. It’s humiliation.

I don’t look at James as I steady myself against him, hands wrapping around his arms as I plant my feet under myself again. They shake violently, but I hold on, _stubborn_ , feeling something like a whimper or a sob rattle in my chest. For the first time, I don’t want to let it free, because it’s all wrong. My own sense of belittling and feeling like something _less_ is not why I want to cry. 

For his part, James doesn’t say anything, doesn’t mention the reddening that I’m certain has taken over my entire profile. In the absence of his voice, I’m left to rage inside my own mind, feeling an overwhelming amount of helplessness and disgust grow roots within me. My body won’t cooperate with my burning need to stand strong and it’s a travesty that far outweighs any emotion I’ve felt so far.

I almost miss my past self from the gray room—at least I hadn’t needed a crutch back then.

It’s only when dim yellow light assaults my eyes that I register where James has led me. It’s a modest bathroom, a bit _too_ minimalistic. I take in the lone basin, bathtub, and toilet. All white, all old. There’s nothing else.

His hands on my shoulders squeeze gently. I can’t look at him still. “Can you stand?”

I don’t know, but I very well won’t say no. “Yes, I think so.”

“Okay,” I feel his exhale lightly on the top of my head. I’m suddenly aching to turn around and assess just how much taller he stands next to me. What a fool I make. “Wait here. I’ll get the clothes.”

He waits for my acknowledging nod before his hands leave me, hovering in the air for a second in case I collapse again, but I _will not_. I allow my teeth to clench together painfully hard, manipulate myself into believing a fabricated reality where stability is my friend and not a nemesis. It seems to work.

Once reassured, he leaves.

I dare not move a muscle until he’s back, afraid of losing balance again. It takes longer than I expect, but when he jogs back inside, I’m automatically turning my head around to see the reason behind the delay.

James carefully hangs the clothes and fresh towels in his hands on a hook behind the door that I’ve failed to notice before. I watch silently as he pads around the bathroom, turning on the taps above the bathtub, placing a new bar of soap on the side, checking the temperature of the water that flows out. He’s patient, relaxed, undemanding.

Inexplicably, my warm appreciation for him in this moment manages to thaw the blistering ice that has morphed my insides.

“Evans,” he calls, and he’s earned the pain that it takes me to face him again, “I’ll wait outside. Let me know if you need anything.”

I bite my lip. “Okay. Thank you.”

After a second that feels too prolonged in view of James’s unwavering stare on me, he turns around and leaves, shutting the door and dragging out a rush of breath from me in the process.

I look around for a few seconds, and then make the painstaking journey towards the tub. My fingers tremble tellingly until I’ve rested them against the wall, using the solidness of it to guide myself forward. It feels less like walking and more like dragging.

Water has filled the large basin to about three-fourth of its capacity by now, and I figure it’s as good a time as any to rip off the dress that sticks to me like an additional layer of bloodied flesh.

Except, my calculations are all wrong. I’ve not accounted for my body’s sheer inability to function as anything more than a flimsy house of cards; more inclined to collapse than it is to endure.

Terror has seized my thoughts, but I’m still making an attempt. I reach down, spine bending—but no, it refuses to bend, adamant in its role as a rusted metal rod. Desperation is clawing up my throat now. My fingers scramble with intention to reach the hem of the blood-soaked dress near my knees. I’m almost there—tips _skim_ the edge, a sudden, broken whimper flying out my traitorous lips—and I’ve finally grasped it, harsh material caught between a clamped fist.

I straighten, panting with the effort, sweat flowering against my hairline.

It’s a victory that I can’t bask in for more than a few fleeting moments; I’ve barely dragged the cloth up to my stomach before I’m letting go, sagging against the wall behind me, allowing despair to envelop everything.

It takes no genius to inform me this: I’m incapable of even taking off my own clothes.

My gut has twisted in on itself, abasement and weakness merging into one another to create a monstrosity of an emotion that has me clapping a hand over my mouth, fighting off yet another bout of rising, overpowering panic. I stare at the yellow-tinted wall across from me, try and remember how to breathe.

I stay that way until something wet against my feet jerks me back into myself.

Eyes follow a sluggish trail from the water pooling around my feet, steadily, rapidly, to where the bathtub is submerged under its own contents, waves of water crashing out from its edge. My mind registers that I need to move _right_ away, close the tap _immediately_ , and yet, I just blink at the scene, transfixed by how the liquid flows out of its intended container because it can’t be suppressed any longer.

I’m haunted by the comparison I make.

By the time my hand eventually closes the tap—muscles and bones groaning with displeasure—I’ve decided there’s no way out of this.

“James!” My voice bounces off the bathroom acoustics, “Potter, are you out there?”

It takes a beat, but then there’s a tentative knock against the door. “Evans? You alright?”

“Come inside.”

I feel the pause he takes to follow through on my request even from the other side of the door. But then James steps inside, eyes immediately zeroing in on the water flooding the tiles, my no-doubt alarming state as I stare at him, feeling humiliation wrap its arms around me like a trusted companion.

Two strides, and he’s right in front of me.

“Lily,” he sighs, touches three fingers to my wrist, “what happened?”

Realization hits me that he only uses my first name in such moments of raw openness. I’m not sure what to make of that.

“The dress. I can’t remove it. Hurts too much.”

He doesn’t say anything, simply stares, mouth parted slightly as if he doesn’t dare breathe. I search for the pity in his eyes and find only sadness and understanding. “I need your help,” I add, because he’s waiting for me to.

James gives no acknowledgment—for which I’m unbelievably grateful—and simply walks out of the bathroom, his own feet now wet with water. I imagine the trail he must leave in the room, wonder how far and wide this house must span, until he’s returned to my side, a scissor in hand.

Comprehension dawns, clear and bright, and relief duly follows.

I look at him, watch as his eyebrows rise in silent question, and nod. My heart strains against the confinement of chest muscles, only too willing to leap out as he steps closer to me—he is _tall_ —and reaches down to hold the hem of my dress, little finger grazing thigh, snatching oxygen, emptying all thought. He keeps the blades of the scissor carefully angled away from my body, and yet, with that first _snip,_ some string inside me becomes untethered.

I’m _exhilarated_.

When he hears no protest from my lips, James continues, gentle and unhurried, _snip snip snip_. I’d easily buy his façade of calmness if it weren't for the deep rise and fall of his chest, the redness tingeing the tips of his ears. He stands close enough for me to feel the comforting heat emanating from his body, for me to properly appreciate the strands of hair that fall on his forehead.

He doesn’t look up and I don’t look down.

 _Snip_.

Air rushes over the tops of my thighs, in between my legs, and I can’t hold back the small gasp that escapes. James immediately halts, and now his inhale is perilously loud. Neither of us move, and all I hear for a handful of seconds is the infrequent drip of water in the tub; evidence of my feeble attempt to turn off the tap.

His eyes are too slow in their travel to mine. The hazel has gone dark, pupils blown. My toes curl against wet floor. “I can stop,” he informs, voice low.

I’ve managed to shake my head. “I’m okay. Go on.”

He’s almost relieved to look away again, and some part of me recognizes the wisdom in that. The space between us crackles with unimaginable energy, and every breath feels dangerous, as if it hangs onto the brink of something monumental.

I’m terribly tempted to let my eyes drift lower and look at the skin that each _snip_ —slower than the last—reveals. Even stronger is my curiosity to know what underthings I wear, to see if I can glean whether they’re scraps of clothing I’d shoved on two years ago being none the wiser, or whether I’ve been forced into them by hands that undoubtedly adorned me in this dress.

Instead, I squeeze my eyes shut, force the wayward thoughts away. I know in my bones that neither answer would be pleasant.

_Snip._

When the dress flaps open near my navel, baring my stomach to the air, goosebumps promptly litter over skin, sensitive and aware. James pauses again, scissor still poised over the next patch of fabric in an ‘X’.

His tongue darts out, wets his bottom lip, and my mouth goes dry.

The very next second, he’s back to cutting, blades capturing the fixed attention of eyes that do not betray him by flitting anywhere else. He seems to have a much better command over his body than I do on mine. This is not astounding to me—I have long since accepted my inability to curb my senses or reactions.

And yet, as the flush creeps over my chest when he steps even closer, wrist adjusting to the rising trajectory of the cuts, I find myself irked at my skin’s translucence, which, at this moment, is potent enough that I catch the changing tint from my periphery. There’s a noticeable halt to James’s movements once more when the edge of the scissor kisses the elastic of my bra.

I’m half expecting him to enquire after my comfort again, but he surprises me by wordlessly continuing.

And here, right now, is when those embers of insecurity I’d felt earlier decide to rear their heads and burn me alive. Because when his knuckles inevitably brush over my ribs during the next _snip_ , I feel the touch not only against skin, but against bone.

I feel it _acutely_ against bone. Unhealthily against bone.

And just like that, I’m crashing down again, no longer conscious of James’s every move. It hits me like the darkest wave: a cruel and shallow idea that someone like him could never look at someone like me with anything akin to attraction. And that’s fine, I suppose, for there are more pressing issues in this world that require attention—underground experiments, lost memories, and uncovered abilities not the least of them.

_Snip._

He’s at the collar now, eyes jumping to my face. Once. “You okay?”

I should be alarmed by his attunement to my changing mood. I’m not. “I don’t think so.”

He nods. “I’m almost done.”

I want to clarify that it’s not him nor this proximity that’s bothering me, but I don’t, for it requires me to admit to a level of vulnerability I’m not yet comfortable sharing.

So, I simply wait, feel the _snip_ that breaks open the dress into two separate panels like a long shirt, and then the following one as he angles his hand ninety-degrees, cutting along the seams at my shoulder. The warmth of his wrist as it rests against my collar bone is enough incentive to pull my eyes to his face again.

James continues diligently, though I’m sure he senses my stare.

 _Snip_.

Long, gray sheath of fabric falls over our bare feet, hiding the little distance that had been visible between our toes. I watch as the bloodstains on it start darkening, drinking up the water that still floods the floor.

Light fingers press against my chin, and I’m unnecessarily startled.

“Lift your head,” James says softly, whispers of breath fanning over my cheek, “I still need to cut the other side.”

I’m complying, lifting my head, turning it to the right so that he can get to my left.

It takes only a scant few seconds before the final meeting of blades sends the remaining shreds of cloth sliding and pooling around our feet. I shakily arch off my back from the wall so that the covers can drop from behind me as well. The uncalculated movement sets me brushing against James for the briefest of touches and I feel something spark.

 _Everywhere_.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he curses low, immediately steps back, breathing hard, eyes even darker than I recall. “Sorry, I—”

But I watch the words die inside him, never taking their intended place in the sentence. Instead, for the first time throughout this whole thing, his gaze slides onto me, onto the _whole_ of me. It is distinctly not directed at my face.

I’m unable to look away from him, from the way his lips separate for the most silent of breaths to pass through, from the color that rises over neck and blooms on cheeks to match his ears. And then my eyes travel lower, lower still, notice the prominent outline straining in his pants.

The response is immediate on my part: clenching thighs. Air has perished inside my lungs.

Apparently, my brain remembers how _this_ works.

I don’t know if he’s caught my reaction to him because James has swiftly turned around by the time I look up again. The back of his neck is even redder. For reasons beyond just my body’s incapability to hold itself up, I’m leaning against the wall again, chest expanding greedily.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay,” he cuts me off, voice strained, “not your fault.”

Focusing my eyes on myself is suddenly a much better alternative to contemplating what’s just happened, what’s _still happening_. And so I look away, taking in the only two swathes of cloth that remain wrapped around my body: one over chest and the other between legs. The set was, once upon a time, white in appearance, but has degraded to some dirtier, bloodied, spoiled version of the color now.

But past the smudges and the blemishes, I’m choking back something like horror when I look down at my body. I now understand why my legs have refused to support me, why my arms shake at the slightest pressure, why everything hurts _everywhere_ hurts; I am _weak_ , beyond just soul and mind. I am weak physically.

It’s hard to explain what transpires inside my head at that moment, but the closest comparison I can draw is: they’ve _sucked_ the life out of me.

I see bones where I should see flesh, my stomach is an empty cave that skin has stretched over like a blanket, hip bones jut out frighteningly, bra hanging loose over chest and I’m staggering at the anger—sharp and dizzying—as it crushes any sorrow to climb up to my eyes.

“Turn around,” I say before the directive can be pulled back by shame, “James.”

The muscles under his tee have tensed, but he does as I ask, turns around. Hazel eyes remain trained on my face this time, brows pinched. “Yeah?”

“I want to see myself.”

Something like confusion or surprise flits over his features before understanding takes its place. I don’t know if he thinks me vain. “I’m sorry, Evans. This house doesn’t have any mirrors—it’s not been lived in for several years. I just brought whatever essentials I could grab with Sirius.”

I’m pushing down the distraught cry that wants to escape: _this is essential to me_!

But James is not the rightful receiver of my rage, and so I swallow it down, feel it lodge somewhere uncomfortably in my throat. Curiosity, however, refuses to be satiated. “Tell me how I look.”

He seems to know what I need, and rises to give it to me, takes one step forward. “You have red hair, darker than any shade of the color I’ve ever known. Your eyes are green, and I have nothing else to compare them to except for lush rainforests and leaves sprinkled with dew. Your nose—” he stops, smiles slowly, “it’s small and easily teased red. There’s a light smattering of freckles over your cheeks, but I know how fast they can multiply in the sun. Your lips—” here, he stumbles, inhales a shaky breath, “I never want to remember them as lifeless and blue as I saw them all those days ago.”

I’m gone, unbound from my own existence. “I—”

“In short, Evans, you’re beautiful.”

He will destroy me. “I’m not. How can you say that? How can you stand there and say that when I’m—I’m like this? I feel _hollowed out_ , James. My body is barely holding me together.”

“And you should be _proud_ that it’s managing to do so after everything you’ve been through!” he says. I’m shocked into silence, but he persists, “Fucking hell, I can’t even imagine how you’re functioning at all; I know I wouldn’t be able to in your position. We can and we _will_ get you back on your feet. All you need is proper food and water. But Evans, _this_ , you, now, it’s not a weakness—it’s your strength. You’ve pushed through the horror, don’t let it break you in the aftermath.”

Everything crumbles.

Everything crumbles and I have disintegrated into a thousand different parts, all of them shrieking under the emotions his words have detonated inside me. There’s a long drawn, gut-wrenching cry that finally breaks from my lips, tears that finally kiss their way down my cheeks, but—where is the relief? Where is the lessening of pain?

As if in answer, James’s arms have wrapped around me, pulling me away from the wall and into him, warm, strong, consoling. I clutch on, fastening any remaining pieces of myself to him, and cry and cry and _cry._

It hurts, it bleeds, it helps.

“I need to be clean,” I sob against fabric, “please. _Now_.”

The sigh that rushes out of him sends his chest deflating against me. And that’s the only sign allowed to my senses before James bends, locks one arm under my knees while the other grips a little tighter around my shoulders, and lifts me up. Droplets of water trickle down the edges of my feet before joining the floor.

In the handful of hours that I possess memories of, this is the second time he’s held me like this. ‘Thankful’ is a frail imitation of a word for what I feel.

“I’m going to place you inside now,” he informs. I slacken my grip on his tee-shirt slightly, nod my head.

And then, water laps over my skin, under those scraps of cloth, splash out in huge waves over the sides of the tub. It’s colder than I’d expected, the temperature having dropped while we’d…conversed over several minutes. But I don’t mind it, don’t mind the initial gasp it steals from my throat, don’t mind the flickers of pain as it flows over—into—broken, half-healed wounds. Because beyond the itch of discomfort is the welcome sensation of being _alive_.

This is what I need.

This jarring surge of cold water licking away the grime and tension that remain hidden from my eyes.

James’s fingers press lightly on my bare shoulder. I look up, silent tears streaming down. He’s half-drenched himself. “You alright?”

This time, I give him the truth: “No, but I think I’ll get there.”

His thumb, warm, brushes over my skin. “Good.”

“Can I—” I’m blinking against a sob, “I want to be alone for a while.”

“Of course.”

He throws me a reassuring smile, no trace of hesitation in sight as he strides to the door. At the last second, he’s turned around. “You know you can call me if you need anything, Evans.”

I know. I nod.

Once the door has shut again, I close my eyes and slide down further into the water, letting it soak every inch of me, numbing the hurt somewhat. With my hands resting over the sides, yellow light fighting to penetrate my eyelids, I succumb.

I feel _everything_.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr @maraudersftw xx


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